First things first! In computer science and information science, an ontology describes a set of things, the properties of those things, and the relationships between those things, all in a particular domain. Perfect Memory, the content asset management solutions provider whose clients include some of the biggest names in media, announced the native integration of MovieLabs‘ OMC (Ontology for Media Creation) into its Cognitive Asset Management solution.
The company claims that Perfect Memory is the first content asset management solution provider to offer its platform with native integration of MovieLabs’ OMC ontology. The Perfect Memory team built this integration as the ontological approach advocated by MovieLabs is now recognized as a reference by the film and TV production ecosystem globally.
Motion Picture Laboratories, Inc. (MovieLabs) is a non-profit technology research lab jointly run by Paramount Pictures Corporation, Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., Universal Pictures, Walt Disney Pictures and Television, and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. MovieLabs enables member studios to work together to understand new technologies and enhance interoperability and efficiency. MovieLabs helps set the bar for future technology advancement and then define voluntary specifications, standards, and workflows that deliver the industry’s vision. MetaLabs’ goal is always to empower storytellers with new technologies that help deliver the best of future media for consumers.
A bit more about ontology and how it works and why it is important for the industry. As noted above, an ontology describes a set of things, the properties of those things, and the relationships between those things, all in a particular domain. The domain for the OMC is the production process for creative works, from script and pre-production through to filming, editing, and post-production. The concepts are organized in a graph whose relations can be semantic relations and/or subsumption relations. In this particular case, the main objective sought by the participants of media production is to find how to link people to data and content by presenting to the different stakeholders all the assets created and generated during the production of a creative work.
“Ontologies are powerful tools for collaboration and decision making. That’s why today, many domains have their own ontologies and we didn’t want to reinvent a new ontology, when the one developed by MovieLabs is excellent in every respect,” said Steny Solitude, president and founder of Perfect Memory. “On the other hand, this technology partnership will not only allow us to support them in their market evangelization, but also to be immediately operational for the needs of production studios.”
Even today, whether a producer is looking for a detailed visual of the main character of a film, a director wants to obtain the first version of the script, an art director wants to retrieve the final version of the mood board, a set designer wants to review all the shots to be redone when a prop changes, or an agent wants to get all the scenes with a specific stunt actor, it is often difficult and tedious to search for the many elements created during the production chain of a film without expressly requesting it from the party concerned. The challenge is to make all the data and assets produced throughout the production of a film interoperable and accessible to everyone in real time.
Perfect Memory‘s platform embeds various interconnected AI modules, as well as a powerful semantic engine, to collect, enrich and enhance all types of content: videos, photos, audio files, text documents, etc.. Thanks to its semantic technologies, the platform is able to generate a complete reasoning process from unstructured data scattered in the various IT ecosystems of an organization, and thus transform them into valuable assets.
“MovieLabs and our member studios developed the Ontology for Media Creation to simplify exchanging data across different software systems without the need for adapters or translations,” said Raymond Drewry, Chief Scientist at MovieLabs. “We’re pleased to see Perfect Memory provide native support for OMC and enable their clients to represent the complex relationships between the myriad media components in a production in a structured and seamless way.”
Perfect Memory will be at the NAB Show in the West Hall at Booth W3221, if you want to find more about the solutions being displayed during the event.